17th July 2025
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
15th July 2025
International Day of Women in Diplomacy: UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls visit to Geneva
1st May 2025
The UN Commission on the Status of Women: My first visit as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls
16th September 2014 Brasilia, Brazil
Speed dating UN style
The 69th session of the UN General Assembly starts today in New York. The commonly referred to Ministerial Week – when the high level meetings occur – will take place next week. For most people the UN General Assembly (UNGA) will conjure up newspaper images of that huge hall familiar from television, with rows of […]
16th September 2014 Bucharest, Romania
Sir David King visits Romania
Sir David King, the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change visited Romania on 11 September. Together with Ambassador Paul Brummell, he met with Romanian officials, experts, and NGOs working on energy and climate change issues. Sir David and British embassy staff joined an event in Herastrau Park to celebrate the UK German Climate Diplomacy […]
16th September 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Darfur
Darfur continues to be a major focus for the work of this embassy. We believe strongly that there is no military solution. The fighting has to stop. All parties need to engage in discussion to agree a long-term political settlement. The Doha Document for Peace in Darfur provides a blueprint. But several rebel factions have […]
16th September 2014 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Football, Fun and Fundraising
Most ex-pats live a very privileged life in Sri Lanka, so I’m always grateful to those of my colleagues who make it easy for us to help some of the people who live so close, but are so much less fortunate. Last Saturday, the British High Commission hosted a football tournament to raise funds for […]
15th September 2014 London, UK
Consular appointments discovery – looking outside the department
This is the last in a series of three blog posts discussing the discovery phase for our consular appointments transformation. See the posts on who, what, how and identifying user needs. As part of our discovery phase for the consular appointments service, having done a fair amount of navel gazing we also wanted to look at […]
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15th September 2014 Geneva, Switzerland
Universality under attack
For those of you who may have noticed me looking a little down in the mouth last week, this had little to do with work and almost everything to do with the temporary disappearance of our pet cat. She was obviously not getting enough attention having to compete in our household with two small children […]
15th September 2014 Sana’a, Yemen
Democracy in the making
Today is the International Day of Democracy. This year’s theme – Engaging Young People on Democracy – is particularly relevant for Yemen. Three years ago, young Yemenis took to the streets in pursuit of democracy. Yemen’s democratic journey has been guided by the National Dialogue Conference, which led to the agreement of a new social […]
15th September 2014 Sana’a, Yemen
ديمقراطية في طور الإنشاء
اليوم هو اليوم العالمي للديمقراطية. وموضوع هذا العام – إشراك الشباب في الديمقراطية – هو ذات أهمية خاصة بالنسبة لليمن. قبل ثلاث سنوات، خرج الشباب اليمني إلى الشوارع في السعي لتحقيق الديمقراطية. وقد استرشدت رحلة الديمقراطية في اليمن بمؤتمر الحوار الوطني، الذي أدى إلى اتفاق لعقد اجتماعي جديد، معترفا بمطالب ومصالح جميع اليمنيين والأهم، تلك الفئات الضعيفة والأقليات. اليوم، […]
15th September 2014 Dushanbe, Tajikistan
The Sheep Run
The following is a post by Dr. John Heathershaw, Senior Lecturer in International Relation, University of Exeter. May in Tajikistan is a time when Shepherds move their sheep from lowland fields to higher mountain pastures (ailoo). On the road from Vakhdat to Garm, I witnessed herds of up to 1,500 sheep moving along the road with […]
13th September 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Fighting Ebola
A few weeks ago some cases of malaria briefly gave rise to rumours that #Ebola had arrived in #Addis. Thankfully this was wrong, but the story went viral on social media. Rumours and misinformation can spread even faster than Ebola. As the disease continues to spread, there are increasingly worrying projections about how far it […]